Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling Of My Home

591 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Oppression in literature

This critical article review will focus on Anh Hua's proposal that the text of Audre Lorde's bio-mythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name depicts erotic, traumatic, and homeland embodied memories. Hua's argues that Lorde reflecting on these memories and revealing them to the audience encourages women, in particular, to be vocal instead of suppressing the events that contributed to their development. Covering these experiences during the time when her race, gender, and sexuality were looked down upon allow Lorde to heal and gain a sense of ownership. All in all, Hua highlight that the author's language encourages the audience to embrace and voice the oppressed events that people expect one to hold back. Speaking of these erotic, traumatic, …show more content…

Hua highlights that Lorde’s voicing these oppressed memories allows an African-American lesbian as herself to recall these events as powerful moments that contributed to her development. From there, the text claims that “embodied memories are place specific” which is crucial to remembering events that take place in a person’s life (114-5). The erotic body memory projects the experience of possible than reality “reflecting the indefinite and underdetermined” (115). Hua highlights this notion by targeting a scene where Lorde recalls pounding spices to make a traditional West Indian dish to celebrate her first menstrual cycle. This scene exhibits Lorde’s sexual awakening with the imagery of her mother’s female body. The author informing the audience about her erotic embodied memory is important for it subverts the “patriarchal heterosexist culture” that most readers have grown up to know (116). This experience of discovering her desire for the same-sex allows others to reflect and embrace their sexuality. Hua stresses that the erotic is a tool to empower and reclaim the body. All in all, narrating this event in particular over to the audience enhances the authority she has over her sexuality as an African-American lesbian. This moment becomes powerful since Lorde’s erotic embodied memory reclaims the “the black lesbian body” instead of remaining silent

Show More
Related

  • Black Bodies White Bodies Summary

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    by analyzing the case of Sarah Baartman as the quintessential Black female erotic body. The viewing of black women’s bodies as animalistic explorative and subsequent centuries of colonialism but also connects all hegemonic movements to surveillance and defining/redefining of the black female body.

    Read More

  • Sharon Olds' The Possessive

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    Teenage rebellion is typically portrayed in stories, films, and other genres as a testosterone-based phenomenon. There is an overplayed need for one to acknowledge a boy’s rebellion against his father, his life direction, the “system,” in an effort to become a man, or rather an adult. However, rarely is the female addressed in such a scenario. What happens when little girls grow up? Do they rebel? Do they, in a sudden overpowering rush of estrogen, deny what has been taught to them from birth and shed their former youthful façades? Do they turn on their mothers? In Sharon Olds’ poem, “The Possessive,” the reader is finally introduced to the female version of the popular coming-of-age theme as a simple haircut becomes a symbol for the growing breach between mother and daughter through the use of striking images and specific word choice.

    Read More

  • Black Female Sexuality in Passing by Deborah E. McDowell

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Deborah E. McDowell’s essay Black Female Sexuality in Passing, she writes about the sexual repression of women seen in Nella Larsen‘s writings during the Harlem Renaissance, where black women had difficulty expressing their sexuality. In her essay, she writes about topics affecting the sexuality of women such as, religion, marriage, and male dominated societies. In Toni Morrison’s short story, “Recitatif” there are examples of women who struggle to express their sexuality. The people in society judge women based off their appearance, and society holds back women from expressing themselves due to society wanting them to dress/act a certain way. Religion is one point McDowell brings forth in her essay, during the Jazz era she stated that singers such as Bessie Smith, Gertrude Rainey, and Victoria Spivey sung about sexual feelings in their songs.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Daniel David Moses's 'Sovereign Erotics'

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    As a collection, Sovereign Erotics centers on the voices of indigenous, non-binary, two-spirit artists in an attempt to fill a gap in currently available works of trans, queer, and indigenous literature. "Collaboritively, the pieces of Sovereign Erotics demonstrate not only the radical diversity between and among today 's GLBTQ2 writers, but also the beauty, strength, and pride of GLBTQ2 people in the twenty-first century" (14). This collection, to simply exist, is an act of resistance against the centuries of violence, genocide, humiliation and dehumanization that generations of Indigenous LGBTQ and Two-Spirit people have experienced, and, sadly, continue to experience.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Poetry Is Not A Luxury, By Audre Lorde

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    In this paper, I plan to explore and gain some insight on Audre Lorde’s personal background and what motivated her to compose a number of empowering and highly respected literary works such as “Poetry is Not a Luxury”. In “Poetry is Not a Luxury”, Lorde not only gives voice to people especially women who are underrepresented, but also strongly encourages one to step out of their comfort zone and utilize writing or poetry to express and free oneself of repressed emotions. I am greatly interested in broadening my knowledge and understanding of the themes that are most prominent in Lorde’s works such as feminism, sexism and racism. It is my hope that after knowing more about her that I would also be inspired to translate my thoughts and feelings

    Read More

  • Sluts and Lesbians: More Alike than Different in a Society of Labels

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    King, Rosamond S. "Sex as Rebellion: A Close Reading of Lucy and Brown Girl, Brownstones." Journal of African American Studies 12.4 (2008): 366-377. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 20 July 2011.

    Read More

  • Audre Lorde

    1734 Words  | 4 Pages

    In our class discussions and reading, I learned that women were once in charge of the human race, women were a part of a community, no race was inferior or superior, there was peace and harmony in the world until the patriarchal era came, planning to embed itself in the ground for a long time. Women were raped of their identity, their race and their status in society. Men ruled the biblical stories, leaving Mary out. Hence, the war started between the races, women fought to gain their identity back and to do so, they started with writing. One of those women was Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde was raised in a very sheltered family. She was protected by her mother who believed that white people should not be trusted. Seeing her mother as an idol, she dared not to question her authority and obeyed her as she said. The pivotal point was when Lorde was on her own in college, it is then she fought racism and prejudice with writing and her involvement in the women community.

    Read More

  • Alice Walker’s The Color Purple And Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

    1054 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.

    Read More

  • Essay On Colorblind Intersectionality

    1799 Words  | 4 Pages

    In other words, Carbado meant to prove that not only Black women fit into this definition of intersectionality, and therefore there are other groups of people, aside from Black women, who can share their same experiences. Carbado’s theory about gender and colorblind intersectionality comes close to being able to explain Audrey Lorde’s understanding of the Black women identity. But applying Carbado’s theory it becomes more inclusive towards other oppressed groups of people, and it highlights Carbado’s expansion of intersectionality within Lorde’s essay.

    Read More

  • Flipping The Script: Romancing Zane's Urban Erotica Analysis

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    Conseula Francis’ “Flipping The Script: Romancing Zane’s Urban Erotica” is an analysis of how contemporary romance novelist, Zane, frees African American women through her “frank and open discussion of sex as liberatory” (Francis 169). Zane has been called an “erotic revolutionary, someone who challenges traditional scripts that offer men greater pleasure to indulge in a fuller range of sexual expression” (Francis 168). Francis states that Zane accomplishes a rare feat in her ability to “[reframe African American] female sexuality as a space for emotional satisfaction rather than a space defined by physical and emotional oppression” (Francis 169). As a result of how distinctively counter-cultural Zane’s work is, her work is oftentimes mistakenly

    Read More

  • Analyzing Audre Lorde's Poetry

    581 Words  | 2 Pages

    Audre Lorde defines the erotic as “a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings; it is the assertion of the live force of women, creative energy empowered and knowledge of ourselves.” Lorde further states that it is the “recognising the power of the erotic within our lies can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world” (Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” Sister Outsider, p.54-59). As Lorde is suggesting in her essay, those who experience oppression because of sexual desire or sexuality should embrace the erotic. Through Lorde’s poetry, the poet attempts to give those from a marginalised group a voice within literature. In addition, Audre Lorde emphasises in her poetry, as does

    Read More

  • Lucy In Jamaica Kincaid's Antigua

    1775 Words  | 4 Pages

    Lucy, the eponymous character of Jamaica Kincaid’s second novel, moves from Antigua to New York not in an arbitrary move, but in a calculated effort to explore her latent queer sexuality and gradually escape the gendered labor of her homeland. By working as an au pair for an upper class white woman named Mariah, Lucy trades birthing labor for domestic labor in a move that initially seems lateral, but serves as a potential gateway to freedom from caretaking that would have been inaccessible in Antigua. Unbridled from her mother, the American Lucy has opportunities to explore her sexuality without being deemed promiscuous, and has the ability to live with a woman she can have intimate relations with. Lucy has continuously disobeyed the performative

    Read More

  • Multicultural Literature

    1700 Words  | 4 Pages

    The phrase “ugly roots” emphasizes that what readers may not want to hear about a culture, including their own, will be told. Nothing is held back in this type of reading, everything is told- there are no secrets. The writing is a source of information that helps readers to better understand the world around them. Feminism is also a form of multicultural writing. This form of writing shows and stands up for women’s rights and how gender equality is important in our society today and even in the past (What). Julia Alvarez’s novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost

    Read More

  • Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood as an African Feminist Text

    3065 Words  | 7 Pages

    As a female in Africa, the opposite of male, woman suffers sexual oppression; as an African, the opposite of white in an ever-colonized nation, the African woman also suffers racial oppression. Nnu Ego, Emecheta's protagonist, became at once for me the poster female of Africa, a representative of all subjugated African women, and her story alerted me to all the wrongs committed against African women, wrongs that could only be righted through feminist discourse. As with many surface readings I have performed as a student of literature, however, my perspective on The Joys of Motherhood began to evolve. First, I realized and accepted Nnu Ego's failure to react against oppressive forces in order to bring about change for herself and the daughters of Africa. I consoled myself, reasoning that the novel still deserves the feminist label because it calls attention to the plight of the African woman and because its author and protagonist are female.

    Read More

  • A Feminist and Post-Colonial Analysis of Anowa by Ama Ataa Aidoo

    1257 Words  | 3 Pages

    A feminist analysis on the other hand shows that Anowa is a woman who is struggling against the 1870’s African feminist identity (the identity of weakness). The drama surrounds the story of a young woman called Anowa who disobeys her parents by marrying Kofi Ako, a man who has a reputation for indolence and migrates with him to a far place. Childless after several years of marriage, Anowa realises that Kofi had sacrificed his manhood for wealth. Upon Anowa’s realisation, Kofi in disgrace shoots himself while Anowa too drowns herself. In a postcolonial analysis of “Anowa”, we can see some evidence of colonialism.

    Read More

More about Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling Of My Home

Open Document